Observers say lack of oversight will breed waste

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, September 20, 2005

WASHINGTON - A clash of opinion between New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and President Bush on Monday was the latest sign of a conflict over authority in Katrina's aftermath.

Nagin suspended the repopulation of the city late Monday, citing a possible hit from Tropical Storm Rita. Hours before the decision, Bush cautioned local officials against going ahead full throttle with a return of residents and business owners.

"We share the goal of the mayor, but we have got concerns," Bush said at the White House. "We also want to be realistic about some of the hurdles and obstacles that we all confront in repopulating New Orleans."

The conflicting stances raise questions about who will be making crucial funding and policy decisions on Katrina relief in the coming months.

To override a policy decision by Nagin or other local officials, Bush would have to satisfy burdensome legal requirements, said David Dow, a constitutional law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

"He probably does have some authority that it would clearly not be appropriate to exercise," Dow said. "If there was some threat to the nation's general welfare presented by the city being repopulated, it's possible to say that he would have that authority — but that is so far-fetched in this particular example."

Charles "Rocky" Rhodes, constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, said Bush could declare a national emergency and install himself as "supercop."

"There are ways Bush could do it, but I think they would all be a real stretch under the current statute, and he would have to defend what he did to Congress," Rhodes said. "It would be a question of whether Bush wants to risk political capital to try to shoehorn this situation into a statutory scenario where he essentially becomes, in essence, a dictator."

Bush has been taking a different approach, using persuasion rather than federal powers to make his point.

Officials also are struggling with how to administer a costly reconstruction project that critics fear could easily suffer waste and abuse.

The president has resisted the suggestion that he appoint a federal hurricane czar to oversee the rebuilding efforts or create a quasi-government authority to manage reconstruction.

Others express concern that without a more unified federal approach, many reconstruction contracts would lack enough oversight and the activities of various agencies would be poorly coordinated.

Government watchdog groups have complained that a number of private Katrina cleanup contracts have been awarded without competitive bidding to politically connected companies such as the Shaw Group, which hired former Federal Emergency Management Agency director and Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh as a consultant.